


Betrayal

by Teravolt



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Basically Lotor's inner monologuing, Betrayal, Post Season 4, Voltron season 4 spoilers, character backstories, mini-series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 03:22:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12497596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teravolt/pseuds/Teravolt
Summary: Thoughts of the abandoned--what it's like to know that you are alone in not just the world, but the entire, vast universe.





	1. Ezor

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me on Tumblr (@Teravoltron) for hurting Lotor's feelings more than S4 already did.

Perhaps I was still raw.

Still grieving, still struggling. Attempting yet to understand, grasping desperately at a feeble, fragile hope that if only I could comprehend the reason behind the betrayal of my exile, the cruelty of being cast from my home, I would somehow learn to come to terms with it. To shut out my agony, to deaden my suffering heart to those wielding the blade that cut me so deeply. To move on and start anew.

That is not so hard to believe, is it? Especially when one is so incredibly desperate for something to believe in.

Perhaps that is why you stood out to me. Perhaps, in the infinite sorrow behind your eyes, I saw a reflection of myself. Alone, frightened, bleeding from wounds that not even miracles themselves could ever hope to heal. Unable to pull from the deepest depths of space a reason for my pain but recognizing the same bitter agony collecting in the corners of your eyes, tears that you were brave enough to shed while I was not.

Brilliant, you were. Brighter than the twin suns of Askyria, your home, outshining them a thousandfold. A supernova at its peak, bursting, radiating energy and light, only to be snuffed out by the reality of your heritage. Mocked, disregarded, cast aside until your light was smothered by the darkness of their cruelty, the shadows and whispers of their laughter lingering in the back of your mind even in the absence of their source.

Intelligence. Wit. Kindness. Charisma.

Galra.

It hung over you like a blade suspended by a single, precarious thread. A pendulum whose heartless rhythm bit into you again and again, the line just long enough to permit it. A source of permanent agony, of wounds carved not into flesh, but rather, your very soul.

I only approached when your anguish finally escaped you, the day the spidering crack in the dam you build to keep your pain in check gave and the tears spilled forth like acid rain. You cried out to the sky, to me—demanded to know why you weren’t good enough, why your lineage carried such foul connotations as to paint a target on your back in your own blood. Why your efforts were in vain, overshadowed by that word, one spoken in hushed whispers and accompanied by fingers pointed in accusation.

Galra. Galra. Galra.

The half-breed, the monster, the freak.

Askyrians always were a cruel people. And yet... they were your people, no? A people you were born into, a society within which your life was meant to be lived. Until it rejected and shunned you, cast you out like garbage.

Perhaps that is why...

We spoke for hours, you and I. About the universe and its many unkindnesses. Of hopes and dreams, compassion and betrayal, the fragility of bonds formed between living things. How pitiful those illusory bonds, you said, when in the end, each only cares for himself. And yet, how pitiful the creature who cannot forge them at all.

We came to a mutual understanding. And from that day, we shared a connection. The sort that comes to be between individuals of like mind and background. One strengthened by the sharing of pain, of tears and courage passed between one another.

You were the first of four. My first love, in a way, and my first friend where there were none. I was prepared to live my life with only you at my side, for the foreseeable future and into the rest of eternity. Somewhere in my chest I felt as though that was acceptable, and for the first time, happiness dangled itself in front of me, no longer so impossibly out of reach.

Your faith in me gave me strength. Your charisma drove me onward. Your loyalty instilled in me the courage to carry us toward a better future, no matter the obstacles ahead, and your light illuminated our path.

...And yet...

How pitiful those illusory bonds, you said, when in the end, each only cares for himself.

How was I to know, in that vulnerable state, that you spoke not a philosophy, but a warning?


	2. Zethrid

I never understood fear until circumstance forced upon me something to be afraid of. Without fear, there was nothing to overcome in those days, and the concept of courage eluded me as well. Only when it became a necessity in the battle I was fighting—a battle against no one, against utter loneliness and my own silent despair—did I begin to understand, and then to wonder... what sort of life had I been leading? How bland an existence without these raw emotions, primal instincts of self-preservation and a will to go on, to fight for the right to keep living?

I came to appreciate fear. Apprehension, dread, the prickle of it that came with the unknown.

And then there was you.

You, who knew both what it was like to fear and to be feared. You, who had made a promise to yourself that terror would never again be permitted to constrict your heart in its vice, who instead wielded it like a whip with which to send your enemies scattering. Enemies and allies alike, really, for after living a life cloaked in dread, trust is not a word that holds any sentiment.

You vowed not to feel fear, but to steal from it, to rob it of its very role. And you succeeded.

Or so you thought.

Fear is indiscriminate, you see. It grasps at anything with a heartbeat, friend or foe, and only the dead may escape its wrath. In your endeavor to drive away those who wished you harm, your success carried to anyone who had ever wished to remain close to you. Your violence and rage, pent up from years of barely surviving, rendered you unapproachable. A danger. You brandished terror as both a weapon and a shield, but your sword was double-edged, and much of the blood you spilled was your own, dripping steadily from wounds carved by isolation.

The problem with fear is that it leaves no room for rationality. To those cowering in your shadow, you had become nothing short of a monster. To you, beneath whose armor the silent tendrils of fear had stealthily crept without your noticing, they were the monsters, incapable of understanding and making no effort to try.

I recognized your loneliness—it resonated with my own, bells of familiarity toning in the locked chambers of my heart. I wonder if perhaps you may have heard them—if that is why you hesitated, your blade mere inches from my throat. Was I afraid? In truth, I don’t think I’ve ever really known the answer. But if I was, it didn’t show. At least, that is what you told me.

We came to a mutual understanding. I made you an offer. And from that day, we shared a connection. The sort that comes to be between individuals who have nothing left to lose, whose lonelinesses resonate with one another without a single verbal cue. A bond between those who know, deep down, that it’s alright to be afraid, for fear breeds courage and gives us the strength to continue living, and in that right, allows us to be truly brave.

You were the second of four. You became my rock, my backbone. Your fierceness and pride spread like a contagion, spurring us onward no matter what lay ahead, and your lust for the fight became one born of the desire to protect not only yourself, but those you had come to care for in the same way we cared for you. You were strength, power, bravery. You were fearlessness.

...And yet...

I caught your eye the moment before my own fell shut without my consent. I watched my own reflection topple to the ground before them, and in those final, cruel seconds, you turned away, leaving behind for the second time a past you no longer wished to be a part of.

To fear is to fear and nothing more—a primal instinct born of the need for self-preservation. It does not ask permission. It simply is. Bravery is a decision, one made to fight for the desire to keep living. But to turn your back out of ignorance, to allow yourself to be overtaken by your lack of understanding like the monsters who once forced their own title upon you…

That is cowardice.


	3. Narti

There is no greater pain than that which comes with knowing, wholly and beyond any shadow of a doubt, just how unwanted you truly are. To look into the eyes of those you thought you could count on, to whom you would entrust your entire life, and see not an inkling of emotion there—not affection or kindness, nor a single indicator that the souls behind those cruelly vacant eyes would mourn your death even for a moment. That pain is one of great emptiness, for it saps your will to live like a poisonous bloom that feeds on anguish and grows to fill the void within your chest.

It is a pain that I could not be rid of, a flower that I could not uproot no matter how hard I tried.

The words of my father haunted me—distant, malicious echoes lingering at the corners of my subconscious. The hollow look of my mother’s gaze, the empty stare that plagued me day and night, a constant reminder that the woman who gave me life would not flinch if my flame were snuffed out before her, clawed permanent, unhealable scars into my heart. Scars that, from time to time and without warning, would ache so horribly as to bring me to my knees, shoulders weighted down with the reality of my solitude.

Perhaps it was cruel of me to be thankful that I was not the only one bearing such agony, to have found relief in another’s suffering. But somehow, you did not resent me for it.

Who can say how long you survived, isolated on that distant moon? Cast aside by those who couldn’t be bothered to care for you? By those who saw you not as a child, but a liability—a burden unworthy of saving. Unworthy of love. In that dark and desolate place, devoid of life and light, you soldiered on. You bore your pain and displayed your scars, for to you, each was not symbolic of hardship, but rather, of determination. And despite the odds stacked against you, unhindered by what others viewed as a disability, you _thrived._

Even so, I could see the cracks presenting in the way you carried yourself, the tired sway of your limbs. The way you would sit, motionless, for seconds, minutes, hours at a time, consumed not by the darkness of that cold and lonely moon, but by that of your own heart. They showed in your tendency to forget that eating is a necessary act in sustaining life, in your inability to let sleep claim you—because physical exhaustion is not quite the same as having grown tired of being awake. It was not long before I came to realize that your silence did not stem from an inability to speak, but rather, that untold years of isolation had stolen from you any words you could ever hope to have said.

You were not helpless. You had proven that much. But you were damaged.

As was I.

Perhaps that is why I grew so close to you, who understood my innermost demons in the most intimate of ways. Perhaps my desire to fix you, to alleviate your suffering, was a direct result of my own desperation for someone to look upon me in the same light. As someone not completely lost, not entirely unsalvageable. One could easily say that I found in you the hope I longed for someone to find in me—that I ached to find in myself.

We came to a mutual understanding. I made you an offer. And from that day, we shared a connection. The sort that comes to be between individuals who know what it is to be left behind, to receive the gift of life only to come to know it as a curse. A bond between burdens, forged from the iron found in the blood of the broken. Our wounds tied us together, healed into one another, and each of us became the other’s scar.

You were the third of four. You became my reminder, my assurance that no matter the circumstance, there would always be someone who understood. Your resolve and determination to continue existing in spite of your past became my inspiration, and you my teacher. Though I always wondered, many times aloud, if it was heartless of me to be thankful for your presence—if perhaps you felt used, taken advantage of, as though my gratitude was not for you, but for the circumstances that brought you to my side, you never begrudged it of me. That much was a promise—one you made to me a thousand times over, always with a smile.

But even the most heartfelt of promises can be built on a foundation of lies.

Perhaps you resented me after all—grew to despise me a bit more with each unwitting transgression. Had the universe been kinder, more permissive, I’d have asked you why. Even now, as the hole in my chest throbs, gaping and raw around the edges, I would give anything for an answer to that single question. And yet... at the same time, a part of me that I’ve done my best to silence whispers to me, warns that the knowledge I seek is not something that I would be capable of handling—that it would tear me apart from the inside, damage me in ways that, despite their inability to end my life, would make me long to end my own. Perhaps, however, it is just as well that I allow that voice to convince me, lest I continue to plead this heartless universe for knowledge that you took to your grave—answers that can never be given.

No one will ever know how indescribably painful it was to see you, for whom I’d come to care so dearly, at the end of my sword; how unforgiving the steel of my very own blade as it carved my heart from my chest, leaving me as empty as I’d felt before circumstance—cruel, cruel circumstance—brought us together. Had it been any other way, just the two of us, perhaps, I’d have turned a blind eye to your deceit... if only for the sake of living my final moments under the impression that the time you spent by my side meant something. For dying a blissfully ignorant death would have been far less agonizing than being forced to live another second with your blood on my hands.

But the universe is not that kind. You knew as much, as did I. War is not some effortless thing. It allows not for joy or rest or the comforts of home. It allows not for camaraderie, nor trust. Not even in those with whom you believe you have shared a life. But even so... even now, knowing what I do, I cannot bring myself to regret putting my faith in you. Perhaps that is why my heart yearns so desperately for an understanding it can never reach. Perhaps that is why I will always doubt myself.

Because I am incapable of doubting you.


End file.
